WINTER HAVEN | Florida citrus officials and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson have opened up a northern front in their campaign to investigate whether Brazilian juice processors violated federal trade and tariff laws last year by shipping orange juice to Canada for re-importation to the United States.

By KEVIN BOUFFARDTHE LEDGER

WINTER HAVEN | Florida citrus officials and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson have opened up a northern front in their campaign to investigate whether Brazilian juice processors violated federal trade and tariff laws last year by shipping orange juice to Canada for re-importation to the United States.

Nelson on Wednesday met in Washington with Gary Doer, Canada's ambassador to the U.S., to discuss the allegations, according to a statement from the senator's office.

Doer "pledged to look into it," the statement said.

At the very least, Doer's statement will put political pressure on U.S. Customs and Border Protection to conduct a transparent investigation of the allegation, said Matt McGrath, a lawyer with the Washington firm of Barnes, Richardson & Colburn, which is representing Lakeland-based Florida Citrus Mutual in pursuing the matter.

"It's the political level talking to the political level, and sometimes that opens information flows," McGrath said. "The way it is now, these investigations tend to go into a black box."

Citrus Mutual filed its complaint in April with Customs, part of the Department of Homeland Security. At Mutual's request, Nelson, D-Fla., followed up on the complaint in an Aug. 31 letter to Customs.

"We are in the process of reviewing imports of orange juice from Canada to ensure compliance in all aspects of trade law, including the qualification of preferential duty treatment under NAFTA, country-of-origin requirements and the potential circumvention of anti-dumping duties," Yeager wrote.

The complaint centers around the federal tariff on Brazilian OJ imported into the U.S. Canada does not pay the tariff as a partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The NAFTA treaty also provides other countries cannot avoid paying tariffs by exporting products to Canada or Mexico, the other NAFTA partner, then shipping them to the U.S., McGrath said.

McGrath and Citrus Mutual officials launched their investigation into Brazilian trade practices after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in January 2012 it would test all OJ imports for carbendazim, an illegal fungicide in the U.S. but widely used in Brazil.

It denied entry to any OJ product with a trace of carbendazim, which has been shown to cause cancer and birth defects.

The FDA issued reports on OJ shipments denied entry to the U.S. because of carbendazim until May, when it halted testing.

Many of those shipments came from Canada, which has no commercial orange growers.

Florida citrus officials concluded the carbendazim-tainted OJ shipped from Canada must have originated in Brazil. But the Canadian companies declared those OJ shipments "NAFTA origin," which means exempt from tariffs, McGrath said.

U.S. Department of Commerce figures show Canadian OJ shipments claiming a NAFTA exemption doubled from nearly 14 million liters in 2009 to almost 28 million liters in 2011, he said.

"The amount of orange juice from Canada to the U.S. doubled from 2011 to 2012," Nelson's statement said.

"We expect the ambassador to gather some facts and get back with us on whether and how Canada moves forward on this issue," Dan McLaughlin, Nelson's press secretary, said in an email. "One of the things we want to know, of course, is whether Brazil is processing much more OJ in Canada in recent years."

An official from CitrusBR, the Brazilian processors' trade group, denied the allegation companies there had violated U.S. law in an email to The Ledger in October. The statement noted Brazilian OJ processors have no control over products after delivery to the importer.

CitrusBR officials could not be reached to comment Wednesday on the Canadian action.

Customs officials indicated their investigation could take up to 12 months, McGrath said, and they've released no information so far.

That's not unusual, he added.

Customs officials do not often disclose the results of investigations to the public or even organizations who've filed the complaint, McGrath said. They usually cite federal laws against the disclosure of private company information.

The Canadian government likely is already cooperating with the U.S. investigation, he said, but pressure from Nelson and Doer could force them to disclose the results.

If Customs finds unintentional violations of U.S. trade law, the importers could be required only to pay back tariffs, McGrath said. Customs can levy penalties equal to two to four times the unpaid tariffs for intentional violations.

[ Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-401-6980. Read more on Florida citrus on his Facebook page, Florida Citrus Witness, http://bit.ly/baxWuU. ]

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